Gospel:
Bartelme, Elizabeth
for which the only cure was gold." The stroyed, their princes tortured to discov- cultural ethnocentrism by imagining the "disease" affected imagination so strong- er their...
...have been carefully monitored by the overnight...
...O'Hanrahan, a noted grouch livered by the CIA into the clutches of and drunkard, wants no part of Lucy the Pentecostals, O'Hanrahan collapses Become a Commonweal when she appears, sent by his department with hepatitis and a damaged liver...
...In her and Cairo, Lucy is on his case...
...Elizabeth Bartelme serted between the various parts of the KAREN SUE SMITH is editor of CHURCH book, complete with scholarly apparamagazine, published by the National Pastoral tus, so one knows it is an anti-gospel, esLife Center, New York...
...and ly theoretical language...
...The author has missed no opportunity to air his Can one be religious and liberal...
...It begins with the more abstractly exchangeable form of in- where the ironies are unintended...
...centered on a ritual...
...His method, by the endlessly proliferated representation Revolution of 1688...
...DON WYCLIFF, formerly a member of the St...
...Ships are sent..., the natives driven out or deGOSPEL been stolen and no one is able either to REVIEWERS Wilton Barnhardt find it or to translate it, should it turn up...
...It's a device that is more irritat- is clear that Barnhardt is up on his bibliappears, as do a couple of sinister Jesuits...
...in which the sentence he speaks of his childhood interest actions of their victims almost irrelevant god's flesh and blood were symbolically in The Arabian Nights and Richard Hallito the outcome...
...But traveler-writers he identifies as tolerant, gots...
...W Politics Goaded by O'Hanrahan, Lucy has Trivialize "I urge you all to read it, from Religious begun to lose her innocence and take on Arhatever political as well as Devotion worldly airs and attitudes...
...Although a veloped them artfully...
...case the change is somewhat abruptingly, he gives in and makes her his as- The trials and tribulations of this duo from naif to woman of the world almost sistant...
...From Oxford to Dublin to this a secret...
...discovers sex with a Greek Adonis who -PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON leaves her pregnant and faced with a se"USA Today News Story STEPHEN rious dilemma: should she have the child and give up her plans for the good life, 525.00 at bookstores o r call 800-331-3761 or should she abort it and follow her BasicBooks star...
...There, treats Christianity at work in the New of the European winners who gained the Gulliver describes the founding of a "mod- World as a cultural and capitalist imperi- New World we have inherited, Marvelous em colony": "a crew of pirates," driven alism so convinced that it was right that Possessions reminds us that Amerindoff course, "go on shore to rob and plun- refusal to accept the gift of Christianity ians in both North and South America are der...
...O'Hanrahan, in the movement of the novel...
...Greenblatt image that shows native Americans sat- Greenblatt's terms-like Swift's fiction might have added Diderot...
...Here commences a new dominion ac- THE BAD NEWS quired with a title by Divine right...
...Lucy, of course, help but be touched by his ruminations dogged type and O'Hanrahan cannot is no longer available, though she keeps on the mistakes he has made and the life shake her...
...thias, the disciple chosen to from the University of Chicago, and Dr...
...He Associate to find out what the noted doctor is tries to persuade Lucy to take over the doing and why he is spending so much translation of the gospel now that it is fi- of regrets for a wasted life...
...One cannot of its money...
...And, as often during the Early every detail of Swift's/Gulliver's account and includes Herodotus, Mandeville-a Modem period, imagination is striking- can be found in the works Greenblatt ex- very great liar but a "knight of non-posly cruel...
...The reader, however, is privy to the New York Times editorial board, is editorial gospel's content, as sections of it are inpage editor of the Chicago Tribune...
...CULTURE sis, presents these ideas as shockers for Lucy, who responds satisfactorily, at TOPICS COVERED: creationism least at first...
...Greenblatt has profited from a longview of greed-that the Spanish regular- Greenblatt to cite...
...Greenblatt native losers and unsparing in its judgment into Several Remote Nations...
...Nothing in Marvelous Greenblatt does not mention: Milton's his throat...
...In his first and representations, curiously makes the love...
...LEONARD DEEN teaches English at Queens a lost gospel, that of Mat- Enter Lucy Danton, a graduate student College in the City University of New York...
...Paren- opment, she is a sympathetic character, pel...
...This engaging, a blank, and implicitly guiltless...
...they see a harmless people, are en- could provoke "murderous rage" in the still losing life and culture, land and tertained with kindness, they give the donors...
...Lucy, too, grows and Florence to Rome to Athens, Jerusalem, expecting death momentarily, will live to changes in the course of the book...
...The property of Hebrew Patrick O'Hanrahan, ex-Jesuit and professor of English at Hofstra University...
...In spite of this hasty develOthers, too, are on the trail of the gos- Lord throughout their adventures...
...church, of politics, of fundamentalists, argues that in our sensible zeal to keep of whatever he dislikes most...
...Some of O'Hanrahan's classroom prayer • "cults" euthanasia • abortion • sex ISBELIEF nonsense is funny, much of it is sopho- education • St- Patrick's Day Parade moric, all of it goes on and on, accom- 1992 Republican National How Convention • and much more...
...She is currently re- This curious, overstuffed pecially critical of all the rest of the searching the life of New York Times reporter novel/travelogue/polemic Twelve and dubious about the ResurrecAnne O'Hare McCormick purports to be a search for tion...
...Greenblatt notes, that "it expected perfect unassuming voice opens out and humanIn thinking about Greenblatt's judg- strangers-the Arawaks of the Carib- izes Greenblatt's sometimes forbiddingments and methods it might help to con- bean...-to abandon their own beliefs...
...This "culture" was so confident, burton's Book of Marvels...
...As it is, it's only are handled in such a leisurely fashion that gical stories, to a remorseful penitent, fulltoo easy to put it down...
...Martin's Press, $24.95, 772 pp...
...O'Hanra- than the Lord God-compassion, admo- These two are the linchpins of the book...
...Greenblatt values confining himself to European "practice" of a tortured and murdered god of imagination as much as theory...
...Grudg- work on the gospel...
...er degree Rabbi Hersch), Barnhardt has burgeoning flow of stories, discussions, Unfortunately, none of this adds up to two interesting characters and he has de- and legends does nothing but slow down an enormously exciting tale...
...Stephen L. views at length-his criticisms of the Carter, a professor of law at Yale University...
...power, in spite of the increasing undercountry a new name, they take formal pos- Against such religious conviction, standing, defense, and support they resession of it for the king, they set up a rot- Greenblatt praises a skeptical and toler- ceive...
...In Athens, she religious spectrum you have...
...O'Hanrahan doesn't even miss the poor girl before she's returned...
...a mad monk future...
...session"-and Montaigne...
...scroll for Hebrew University...
...Generous to the sider Book 4 of Jonathan Swift's Travels embrace those of Europe...
...ing than effective...
...All three are all too often distant ten plank or a stone for a memorial, they ant curiosity that tempers the excesses of words on a page...
...It after it for the Franciscans...
...O'Han- religion from dominating Our politics, rahan, acting as the author's amanuen- we're trivializing the faith of millions...
...han's former assistant (and Lucy's for- nition, argumentation break up the para- They hold it together amidst a host of minor mer boyfriend), Gabriel O'Donoghue, is graphs and provide glimpses into the characters and irrelevant information...
...It continues isfying a prostrate conquistador's insa- in Travels-make the familiar strange, so in a tradition (at least partly Protestant) that tiable thirst by pouring molten gold down that we can see it...
...From Goya-esque European Possessions is made stranger than Euro- "Areopagitica" or argument for freedom representations like this Greenblatt draws pean religion, and especially Cathol- of speech and publication, and Locke and no conclusions about what native icism-"a religious ideology centered on his justification of the largely bloodless Americans actually did...
...Had the aufew narrow escapes take place (Lucy's kid- particular, moves from a tiresome old thor exercised some restraint this could napping by the Jesuits, for example), they man, addicted to alcohol and to scatolo- have been a good book...
...University in Jerusalem, the gospel has fessor emeritus of theology at the same 26: 8 October 1993 Commonweal university...
...Lucy, however, is the nally within their grasp...
...Rabbi Mordechai Hersch, O'Han- thetical interpolations appear frequently, open and strong-minded without abrarahan's old pal, is trying to recover the often sounding more like O'Hanrahan siveness...
...0 one hardly realizes anything has happened...
...it leaves Indian behavior eaten...
...The only hardcover book What distinguishes the story is the amount of chatter that goes on...
...L CARTER A Division of HarperCollinsPublisbers Author nF Rrlke nuns nl nn ANimranv..-.acnon Nnh In Louisiana, where they have been de- Also available from HarperCol I i ns CanadaLtd Commonweal 8 October 1993: 27...
...Greenblatt reproduces a famous amines...
...This passage is both too "other" as having a value as great as our ly-and so "rationally," from the point of late and too rhetorically weighted for own...
...El murder two or three dozen of the natives, bring away a couple more by force for a sample, return home, and get their pardon...
...ELIZABETH BARTLEME is a former pro- replace Judas...
...The talk President Clinton bought for is constant and much of it resembles a vacation reading: lecture rather than conversation...
...Swift's story has its developing tradition of European self-inly melted down gold objects of great sources among writers who are less con- spection and self-criticism that is not, in beauty and expressive power into the scious of what they are revealing, and his version, religious...
...The stroyed, their princes tortured to discov- cultural ethnocentrism by imagining the "disease" affected imagination so strong- er their gold...
...American panied by minutely described meals and Law and heavy drinking...
...And O'Hanrahan, although he could have led...
...cal studies, as is evident from the heaviand then there are the born-again Pen- In O' Hanrahan and Lucy (and to a less- ly footnoted gospel, but the constantly tecostals from Louisiana, and the CIA...
Vol. 120 • October 1993 • No. 17
